Heya everyone! I have some other articles set for the week, but I went on a little secret vacation trip to prep for a big article and do some more things with indies. I’ll have that out sometime this week, so sorry for the delay in reviews.

But, with thoughts bouncing around in my head, and some general anxieties kicking in as I come off the feeling of a great weekend back down to my usual depression-induced anxieties about the world, I figured I’d chime in on one recent worry and ramble a bit about one that I had predicted for months now and had a section of my upcoming, long awaited LRG Part 3 piece dedicated to. But since well, I had to rewrite that a bajillion times and only barely have a skeleton laid out for the article, I dunno when it’ll be finished besides “when it gets done”.

But what I will write now, as a monument to this point in time, and as a bit of a means to take some stress off the final LRG piece, is a general multiparagraph postmortem/ramble about something that was gonna hit the market, was clear to be hitting this market ever since November, and is a factor in why I genuinely believe physical gaming media is in critical danger and has been on a path to an iceberg for years now.

Yes, the Tariffs. For those who don’t know, the leader of the US decided to randomly throw a bunch of numbers at random countries, even the most obscure of the obscures to tax them an insane amount for imports they send to the US. As of now, a 104% total tariff on China is set to likely kick in on Wednesday, and some big ones on Vietnam/Cambodia/Taiwan as well, which is certain to seriously damage the big tech market and anything related to electronics. The Switch 2 preorders have been delayed, the Evercade lineup has been pulled from Videogamesplus as they wait to learn the impacts of tariffs on Canada, and tons of small businesses all across america have serious fears about what this and a possible recession could do to their brands. It is seriously bad, and that’s not even before any counter tariffs from countries have kicked in.

The one market I had a feeling could be hit at the hardest levels, is the Limited Print market. I mean, not counting the fact that limprint games are already upselling digital games to the consumer for the sake of convenience, you have a bunch of companies that delayed stuff constantly due to barely being able to afford actually making the things having to deal with possible issues when shipping overseas to the US.

There’s also the fact that a lot of these limprint products, whether they be Limited Run, Strictly Limited, or First Press Games, all like to make collector’s editions with tons of random stuff in them. For LRG in particular, being a US company, they’re gonna get absolutely obliterated by the tariffs directly, while the other countries might end up doing fine to their EU audiences, but will have an even bigger issue shipping to the US from here on out. Will some of these struggling limprints even bother shipping US orders as planned anymore? I’m honestly starting to doubt that at this point, and it may be the death blow for a few of these smaller companies. I can already feel that Premium Edition Games, a company that barely pays their staff properly, probably won’t be changing that anytime soon if future games end up getting tariffed, whether that be from the Switch carts and/or the CE/retro edition goodies.

LRG is already a perplexing case. They’re a US company that does way more in volume than the other Limprints, and thus do a lot of CEs, even if they cut back on them a smidge since the flood they made around 2 years ago. Still, LRG is pumping merch out the wazoo, making tons of CEs even in a cheaper clamshell box form, and basically ordering a bunch of extra crap that was already being made for pennies on the dollar before at pretty low quality; that quality control increase we were told was happening certainly didn’t, if that soulless Tomba Plush is any indicator. If a moderately expensive plush could turn out that badly before the tariffs, I genuinely do not see how anyone would buy that sort of merch at a higher price and not at a higher quality.

But let’s pretend LRG realizes the market is coming for their cheap goods and that’s it, no more merch, just the games. Well, the sales of limprint as a whole have already been dipping pretty consistently for the past few years. Having heard this from analysts, game devs, and even sourced LRG sales info, it really seems the only games that do big numbers in the Limprint scene nowadays are the big name titles like Castlevania and Persona, titles that completely go against the original nature of Limited Print as a whole. Rather than it being a means for indies to put out their games on a cool PS4 disc, now we have big companies using LRG as a middleman so they don’t have to bother putting out their own physical copies outside of Asia. (a market where physical still does rather well, and should be pretty good even post Switch 2)

This sort of stuff was already likely to be a big sign of physical games declining in the west, (after all, if LRG sells less copies of games than SEGA would at a retail store, and if Sega just keeps dumping their games at LRG, then eventually, there just wouldn’t be any games physically except the big names… only through LRG or online) but these tariffs are an extra hit of damage. Forget CEs, (how LRG/any other company handle those already in production remains to be seen, I couldn’t find any announcement on them from any company as of the time of this ramble) if Taiwan-made Switch Carts become unaffordable in the US due to tariffs, that could kill a bunch of smaller indies from ever seeing a physical release, and push more bigger third parties toward smaller Cartridges with a download or just no physical release at all. Or it could make LRG be forced to up their prices above $60 USD for a standard copy just to make even.

Case in point, the Switch 2; pre tariffs, a lot of the third party companies appeared to be inclined to push already expensive Switch 2 carts aside to do a Game Key Card system, where you just get a resellable license that where you download the game to your system via a patch upon putting the cartridge in. No data on cart whatsoever. Do you think any Limprints that survive to make Switch 2 cartridges will want to even consider the higher prices of physical media? Complete on cart at this rate might just become an afterthought, and I’m really curious who the first, if any, Limited Print Switch 2 publisher will be and how they’ll price their games. But if Square Enix is getting on board with the Key Card system even with an 11GB game, I really don’t see how Switch 2 Physical games will be remotely viable in the US unless you use a keycard system or price your physical version to an extraordinary degree.

None of these even begin to get into the recessionary aspect of this all; from people cutting back on gaming stuff to save more funds for important things, or not having a job anymore to even buy anything whatsoever. A lot of stressors will come into play soon, and even if these tariffs magically get lifted sometime soon, I really do not think the China ones will, and if those 104% tariffs kick in… Buckle up, Limited Print fans. I really do not think you’re gonna like the cost of keeping physical media going, and at some point Digital becomes more and more tempting of a cost-saver in an economy where saving money is all the more important. Retro carts, Switch Carts, even PS4/XB Discs will all be hit by this.

And will the companies survive such a blow, or will they just close up shop or get even more selective than they are already? We’ll have to wait and see, but considering how I don’t think any company could have prepared for what the president did last week, I don’t feel confident for anyone still in this market. Let alone a newer company who hasn’t even shipped a single game out yet and already lost publishing deals before these tariffs were announced.